life, to leave one’s work undone, because of the mere lack of seeing any one human being, however dear.”  Stephen knew love better than this:  he knew that life without the daily sight of Mercy was a blank drudgery; that, day by day, month by month, he was growing duller and duller, and more and more lifeless, as if his very blood were being impoverished by lack of nourishment.  Surely it was a hard fate which inflicted on this man, already so overburdened, the perpetual pain of a love denied, thwarted, unhappy.  Surely it was a brave thing in him to bear the double load uncomplainingly, to make no effort to throw it off, and never by a word or a look to visit his own sufferings on the head of the helpless creature, who seemed to be the cause of them all.  If there were any change in his manner toward his mother during these months, it was that he grew tenderer and more demonstrative to her.  There were even times when he kissed her, solely from the yearning need he felt to kiss something human, he so longed for one touch of Mercy’s hand.  He would sometimes ask her wistfully, “Do I make you happy, mother?” And she would be won upon and softened by the words; when in reality they were only the outcry of the famished heart which needed some reassurance that its sacrifices had not been all in vain.

Month after month went on, and no tenants came for the “wing.”  Stephen even humiliated himself so far as to offer it to Jane Barker’s husband at a lowered rent; but his offer was surlily rejected, and he repented having made it.  Very bitterly he meditated on the strange isolation into which he and his mother were forced.  His sympathies were not broad and general enough to comprehend it.  He did not know how quickly all people feel an atmosphere of withdrawal, an air of indifference.  If Stephen had been rich and powerful, the world would have forgiven him these traits, or have smothered its dislike of them; but in a poor man, and an obscure one, such “airs” were not to be tolerated.  Nobody would live in the “wing.”  And so it came to pass that one day Stephen wrote to Mercy the following letter:—­

“You will be sorry to hear that I have had to foreclose the mortgage on this house.  It was impossible to get a tenant for the other half of it, and there was nothing else to be done.  The house must be sold, but I doubt if it brings the full amount of the loan.  I should have done this three months ago, except for your strong feeling against it.  I am very sorry for old Mrs. Jacobs; but it is her misfortune, not my fault.  I have my mother to provide for, and my first duty is to her.  Of course, Mrs. Jacobs will now have to go to the alms-house but I am not at all sure that she will not be more comfortable there than she has made herself in the cottage.  She has starved herself all these years.  Some people say she must have a hoard of money there somewhere, that she cannot have spent even the little she has received.